


A Pathless Wood

by flyingcarpet



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Podfic Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 19:09:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3861346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingcarpet/pseuds/flyingcarpet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He already knew the trees loved Ronan, wanted him, called out his name. And now that Adam was bound to Cabeswater, he found himself wanting Ronan, too. But could it be real?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pathless Wood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/gifts).



> Notes: Title is from the Robert Frost poem "Birches." Quoted song lyrics are from "Greensleeves."
> 
> For Isis, who told me to read these books. Thank you! And thank you also for beta-reading your own gift, which is above and beyond the call of beta duty but much appreciated.
> 
> Podfic now available here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6627796

Adam turned around in his desk, a stack of quizzes in one hand. The edge of Ronan's glance snagged on him and flicked away a moment too late. Ronan's attention was a heavy weight that settled on Adam's skin and left him feeling hot all over. 

He turned back to his paper with a private smile, the warmth of that gaze lingering deep in his bones. Sharp, dangerous Ronan with his dark eyes and his unfathomable abilities -- he could be watching anyone, but it was Adam he sought out again and again.

The next time he glanced up, Ronan was hunched over his quiz and did not even flick an eyelash in his direction. Adam bit his lip and watched him for a minute before turning back to his paper.

* * *

When Adam slept, he dreamt about the trees. Leaves rustled and whispered above his head as he walked, asking for him. Light streamed down in a dappled pattern, dotting the grass beneath his feet. _Magus_ , the forest called. And then, _Greywaren_. 

Beside his feet, a pool appeared. Not the small fish pond of their first visit to Cabeswater, but a clear, deep pool lined with mossy stones. And on the far edge, climbing from the water like a forest creature, was Ronan Lynch. Adam watched greedily as droplets fell from Ronan's close-cropped hair and across the intricate tattoo on his shoulder, sliding over his ribs and down the valley of his spine--

With a start, Adam realized that Ronan was naked. He turned away, feeling flustered and off-balance even in the dream world. 

A moment later he woke, sweaty and hard. He reached out for the dream, trying to grab hold and recapture the scene even as it dissipated into the night air.

On the edges of his vision, he could still see the outstretched arms of the trees and hear their leaves whispering _Greywaren_.

* * *

Ronan leaned low, wielding his pool cue with precision. Adam had a textbook open on his lap and a stack of homework due tomorrow, but he watched anyway. Ronan sighted down the length of the cue, still and focused, and then snapped his wrist and sent the balls snapping into action, _crack-crack-crack-- thunk_ into the pocket. 

He stood back and taunted Noah, the expression on his face open and triumphant, not his usual sharp-edged look. When he caught Adam's gaze on him, his eyes sparkled and his smile flashed, but it was warmer somehow. In that moment, he wasn't Calla's snake or Gwenllian's knight, he was just a boy at home among friends.

This time, Adam was the one who looked away a moment too late.

* * *

"Not in the mood for gelato?" There was a smirk on Ronan's face that said he knew why Adam hadn't gone with the others. 

Adam just shrugged and rested one hip on the pool table. A thrill ran through him as Ronan walked closer, all coiled energy and dangerous intent. He licked his bottom lip and Ronan's eyes flickered down to his mouth, and Adam knew, as surely as he'd ever known anything, that he hadn't been wrong about Ronan's attention all these months.

Anticipation thrummed in Adam's veins and the air suddenly felt very close in the enormous room. Ronan stopped a foot away and stood unmoving, his blue eyes dark and wide.

The wind outside buffeted Monmouth's plate-glass windows and something creaked on the first floor. Adam had never seen Ronan hesitate, and it took him a moment to realize what he was doing. Finally, he got it. Ronan wasn't hesitating now, either: he was leaving the choice up to Adam.

The decision was an easy one.

Adam had kissed girls before, once or twice, but he'd never kissed Ronan Lynch. Still, it was surprisingly easy to step into his space and tilt his chin up instead of down, to press his lips to that angular mouth and breathe in the scent of mist and moss. 

Ronan breathed and Adam shifted, and it was like everything clicked into place -- arms and hands and lips and tongues sliding across one another, a burst of warmth and sensation and hunger pulsing together at once, and all of it coming from the place where his lips were touching Ronan's. It was as if all the tension that had built up between them had poured into this one moment, and all he wanted was more, more, more.

At the edges of his mind, Adam heard the rustle of leaves, felt the protective embrace of the trees wrapping around their bodies, branches above arms. Cabeswater. He tried to push the forest away with his mind, but he couldn't focus.

He thought he heard singing coming from somewhere. _Not now_ , he thought, desperate. _Not here, this is not yours_.

Adam's pulse raced, fueled by a combination of lust and panic. Ronan groaned low in his throat, and Adam felt it all the way down to his bones. He tried to hold on to the moment, but it slipped through his grasp just the same.

 _Greywaren_ , whispered the trees into Adam's deaf ear, and he broke away.

Ronan's narrow lips were pink from kissing, and his pale cheeks were flushed. His eyes were hooded and soft. And despite the cold autumn wind blowing outside, a hundred tiny white flowers were strewn across his head and shoulders, where nothing had been a moment ago.

Boughs and branches crowded into Adam's mind, reaching out for Ronan. _Greywaren_ , said the sound of leaves. He could feel the solid pressure of a tree trunk at his back, crowding him closer. 

With a curse, he stepped out of reach of the trees, and away from Ronan, too. Then he turned around and ran, his feet echoing loudly on the rusty metal stairs.

* * *

In less than a minute, Adam was out the door and sitting in his shitty car in the gravel parking lot. He rested his hands and then his forehead on the steering wheel. His lips tingled with the echo of the kiss, his mind was reeling from the forest intrusion, and his bones were rattled from the run down Monmouth's stairs.

He already knew the trees loved Ronan, wanted him, called out his name. And now that Adam was bound to Cabeswater, he found himself wanting Ronan, too. Two minutes ago, desire had been a palpable thing inside his chest, unquestionably real. Now, all that hard-won certainty was gone, washed away in a shower of petals.

His lungs were finally working again when the passenger door opened and someone slid into the car. Adam didn't look up.

"Thought we were done with mixed messages," Ronan said mildly. Because Adam was completely consumed with panic, Ronan was calm and collected. Of course. "Man, this car really is a piece of shit."

Adam had no idea how to explain, so he didn't even try. He just said, "Cabeswater." 

When Adam turned his head, Ronan was toying with one of the little flowers, spinning it back and forth in his fingers. "Which part?" Ronan asked. He was unbearably beautiful in the low light.

The urge to kiss him hadn't abated at all after the first attempt. If anything, it was even stronger now. Adam knew how those lips tasted, how that tongue had felt inside his own mouth. But this time, Adam could also feel the phantom impression of bark on his shoulders, the whisper of leaves in his broken ear, the brush of petals across his skin. 

What had been magic and what was real? Which was truth and which fiction? What parts of the kiss were Adam's own and what came from Cabeswater?

"I don't know," Adam said, shaking his head. "I don't even--" The sentence just dangled there in the car, unfinished. Even the contents of his own mind were a mystery. All he knew was that the presence of the white flower in Ronan's hand meant that Cabeswater was definitely involved somehow.

There was a sinking feeling in Adam's stomach that told him he might've just fucked up everything that he and Ronan had been building for months. One of the best friendships he'd ever had, and he might've ruined it over something that wasn't even real. He felt his shoulders collapse. "I just want one thing to be easy."

Ronan opened the car door and climbed out. His mouth was twisted at a bitter angle, but his voice was soft when he said, "Nothing about me is easy, Parrish."

* * *

Adam tried to remember exactly what had happened on the day when his father visited his room at St. Agnes, but his memory was never precise enough.

Robert Parrish threatened. Adam avoided. Cabeswater loomed. The shelf in the corner was crooked. The court date drew closer. His father raised a hand. The trees lashed out.

And his father drew back, with a thorn in his palm.

Cabeswater was in his head, but it wasn't content to stay there anymore. It had reached right through his body to defend him against his father. What would the forest do to protect him next time? How far would it go?

 _I will be your eyes, I will be your hands_. That was the promise he'd made to Cabeswater. That was his sacrifice. 

He had not given his mind, or his heart, or his body. He had not offered whatever was happening between him and Ronan. 

Inevitably, anything that could exist between him and Ronan would be touched by magic. That was part of them both, now. But it had to be real, had to grow out of them organically. He couldn't risk losing Ronan's friendship for anything less.

He thought of the trees whispering _Greywaren_ in his bad ear, branches at his back pushing him toward Ronan's lips. And he wondered: who'd been kissing whom? Had it been Adam and Ronan, or the Magician and the Greywaren?

Or had Cabeswater reached through its servant and lashed out once again? Maybe that kiss had been another thorn in the hand, nothing but the forest acting out its own desire for Ronan. Maybe Adam was only the vessel.

He felt sick.

* * *

"I need your help with something," Adam said the next day, as he slid into one of the mismatched chairs around the kitchen table at 300 Fox Way. 

Blue frowned, but she kept eating her yogurt, so she probably wasn't too worried about the request. "Does it involve a helicopter?"

"Noah said you can shield your mind, somehow." Blue flinched, and gave him a guilty look very much like Noah's. Well, that explained why she'd been shielding herself. "I need to be able to do that."

She had just started to answer when Gwenllian's uneven singing drifted through the door, along with the sound of footsteps. " _I have been ready at your hand / to grant whatever you would crave / I have wagered--_ " 

"Ugh." Blue snapped her thick textbook shut and stood quickly. "Let's go outside." 

The beech tree that dominated the backyard was half bare already, its branches brilliant in shades of orange and red. Dead leaves covered the patio in a thick, crunchy layer. 

Blue wrapped her crocheted sweater tightly around her ribcage and tipped her head to one side, regarding him curiously. "Is this about Noah?"

"Cabeswater," he said.

Blue watched him for a moment, waiting. He should have gotten used to this tactic, spending time with Ronan, but it still unnerved him every time. "Persephone told me to keep my thoughts to myself, but that hasn't been enough recently. It's been getting more... aggressive."

"I can teach you what I know," she said, frowning. "But my mom is really the expert."

Adam could not imagine having this conversation with Maura Sargent. He could barely even have it with Blue. 

"...and then I imagine that I'm inside a giant glass bubble," she told him, gesturing dramatically with her arms in a way that made her look like a mime. "Visualize it getting harder and harder, blocking everything out."

"That's it?" Adam asked, after several seconds of silence.

Blue punched him in the arm. The blow was not hard, but not too soft either. It hurt. 

"Ow," he said, rubbing the spot. "I mean, that's enough? A giant bubble?"

"Works for me," she said. "But I was dealing with a pretty specific threat. Cabeswater can be more... vague, you know?"

He did know. He also couldn't imagine forming a glass bubble around himself while in the process of kissing another person, let alone someone with as many sharp edges as Ronan.

Adam ran his hands through his hair and pulled at the strands caught between his fingers. The leaves of the beech tree rustled softly overhead, and he shuddered.

"Is it the visions again?" Blue asked. She reached out as if to touch his arm, then stopped short of making contact. Maybe it had been a mistake to come to her with this, but he didn't know where else to go.

"Yes. No. I don't-- I'm not sure." When Cabeswater first tried to reach out to him, he had seen strange apparitions in his mirror, in his dreams, even in the corner of his eye in broad daylight. They were ghostly, transparent people -- a man in a bowler hat, a woman in a lace dress. But now it was different: trees that crowded his senses, pushing into his space, even reaching right through him.

He told Blue about his father, about the way that Cabeswater had reared up in his vision and then struck out, burying its thorn in his father's hand when he tried to strike. 

She bit her lip. "And you think it'll try again?" 

Adam hesitated. He wasn't afraid that Cabeswater would protect him from his father. That would've been fine. With Robert Parrish, Cabeswater had taken on Adam's fear and hatred. This time, Adam worried that the opposite was true, that perhaps Cabeswater had reached into his mind again, not taking but giving. Giving emotion. How would he even know?

He'd hoped, when he'd asked Blue for help, to be able to dispassionately examine his own thoughts of Ronan and uncover the roots of those thoughts. The spark of desire he felt sometimes when Ronan chewed on his leather bracelets, the warmth that spread through him at one glance from those dark blue eyes or the heat that skittered across his skin when Ronan's touch lingered an extra moment -- did those thoughts come from his own mind?

"I want it out of my head," he said. "Or at least, I want to know if -- when it's there. Does that make sense?"

Blue blinked a couple of times. "Very much so." She sounded oddly like Gansey for a second. "I have an idea," she suggested. She disappeared back into the house for a moment and came back with a dark blue salad bowl and a half-bottle of wine. 

"I'm not sure getting drunk is the answer," Adam said, raising one eyebrow.

Blue just laughed and sank gracefully to a seated position on the cracked concrete patio. "That's Plan B." She patted the space directly in front of her, and he sat in a mirror of her cross-legged position, so close that their knees pressed together. The salad bowl balanced atop their ankles. 

He hadn't been alone with Blue like this since their breakup. She was still every inch the girl he'd admired at Nino's, the same girl he'd sent flowers to and held hands with, and she was exactly as cute and smart and attractive as ever, but somehow those parts didn't add up the same way anymore. She didn't hold the same power over him as she once had.

Now, her nearness only calmed his mind and energized his connection to Cabeswater. Everything around Adam seemed sharper and more bright, this close to Blue's reflective energy. Even the giant beech tree above them seemed to whisper in Latin for a moment. 

Wine splashed up as Blue poured it into the bowl, and a couple drops landed on Adam's sock. The smell of alcohol burned into his nose, a reminder of too many bad nights in a life he was still trying to leave behind. Adam concentrated on the tree above him, the drifted leaves on the patio, the scent of Blue's shampoo. The memories receded.

She pressed a shiny black stone into his palm, and then held each of his hands lightly in her own. 

"Shielding requires concentration," Blue said, as matter-of-fact as if she were talking about the nightly pizza special. "And you can't concentrate on shielding and on your inner thoughts at the same time, right?" Adam had no idea, but he nodded anyway.

"I'll maintain a shield, and that way you can meditate without Cabeswater's influence." Blue smiled triumphantly, and Adam tried not to laugh. Meditate? All he really wanted to do was think about kissing Ronan and whether or not it seemed like a good idea, without Ronan himself there to muddle things up with his ridiculous attractiveness. And without the forest shoving them together.

Huh. Maybe this wasn't such a crazy idea after all. If he could think clearly for a few minutes, that might be enough. He nodded.

Blue drew in a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. She gave his hands a quick squeeze, and a moment later he felt all the hair on his arms stand on end. The air around their bodies crackled with energy and shimmered with light, almost like fireflies on a summer evening. 

Within the barrier of Blue's crackling energy, Adam could feel a sudden sense of peace. He was alone in his own mind for the first time in half a year. The constant presence of Cabeswater, which had become both an empowering and intrusive companion, was gone. He bent his head and looked down into the bowl of wine.

In the satin-dark surface, he saw his own face reflected against the cloudy sky. He breathed, and tiny ripples radiated outward, but they did not stop at the edge of the bowl. The bowl itself, then the concrete of the patio, the grass and trees and fence and sky around him wavered in time with the bowl of wine. Adam watched the shimmering waves spread across the peeling paint of 300 Fox Way and blinked slowly.

With Blue's presence calming him, and her shield protecting him, Adam pushed away every care and worry that kept him up at night, chasing him across the highways and dirt roads of Virginia. 

Instead, he relaxed and let his thoughts turn to Ronan Lynch, which was easy to do. He imagined Ronan's narrow lips and warm skin, the curl of ink on his shoulder and the scent of moss that clung to him. His sidelong glances and weighty attention, his fingers wrapped around the gearshift of the BMW. His breath, his tongue, the soft sound of pleasure he'd released into Adam's mouth.

Adam opened his eyes and found himself inside Monmouth Manufacturing. The sun that streamed through the windows was the warm amber light of late afternoon, but where a distant view of Henrietta ought to be, there was only the sun's yellow glow. Inside, Ronan basked in sunshine like a cat, stretching his arms above his head and smiling. Adam could feel the pit of his stomach drop and his heart begin to speed up, just as it had when they'd been this close in reality.

"Is this real?" Adam asked, as the dream-Ronan paced across the floor toward him. 

"It's a goddamn vision, Parrish. Of course it's not real." It sounded like something Ronan would say, but of course he was right. Monmouth, glowing like the setting sun, wasn't real. Adam himself, feeling bold and liberated, wasn't real. And this boy with the sharp smile, walking closer with every step, wasn't real either.

 _Here's your chance_ , Adam thought. Cabeswater was out of his head and here was Ronan, ready to be kissed. Or at least someone who looked like him. _Do it_ , he told himself. _You can do anything you want_. 

He didn't.

"What are you waiting for, Parrish?"

Adam wanted. He wanted to grab Ronan and kiss him, stick his hand down his pants, touch him everywhere just to see how it felt. But he wanted more than that, too. He wanted to nuzzle into the corner of his jaw and taste the soft skin, wanted to run his fingers over the shorn hair at the base of his skull. Wanted to see his entire tattoo and hear the story behind every jagged edge.

Kissing this imaginary boy would be easy.

 _Nothing about me is easy_.

Adam opened his eyes.

He was sitting on the patio at 300 Fox Way, with the spreading beech tree overhead and Blue's knees touching his. The air around them crackled with energy, and his mind was still wonderfully quiet.

"All right?" Blue asked. 

"Yeah," he said. "I think so."

* * *

Night had already fallen by the time that Adam pulled into the gravel parking area at the Barns. He parked next to the BMW, a sleek dream creation at home in its natural environment. 

Birds and cows slumbered on as Adam climbed out of his car and slammed the door. Wind whistled through the grass, but even Cabeswater was quieter here. Adam slid open the huge wooden door and stepped inside the darkened barn. In the back of the large open space he could see a single square of light -- one lamp in the office that was now Ronan's.

He did not call out, did not announce his presence. Nevertheless, Ronan was watching him intently when he stepped into the open doorway and leaned his shoulder against the wall.

Ronan was curled up in the ancient leather chair, surrounded by ledgers and dusty tools and bags of animal feed. There was no sign of his usual white-hot anger, and even the knife edge of his smile was blunted. His eyes were heavy-lidded as he watched Adam, and Adam watched him back.

Finally, Ronan spoke. "You gonna run away again?"

Adam winced. Well, fair enough. He deserved that. "No," he said. "I'm real sorry about that. I wasn't expecting--" 

Ronan cut him off before Adam could say _I wasn't expecting the magical forest in my head to be as turned on by you as I am_.

"I'm not your fucking experiment, Parrish." Ronan had hardly moved, but suddenly all of his sharp edges were visible again. He was a cobra, coiled and ready to strike.

"You never were." Adam shook his head and stepped farther inside the room, walking around the corner of the desk to approach Ronan. "I wanted you, not Cabeswater. I got both for a minute there, and I freaked out. I'm sorry."

Ronan seemed to relax a little at that. It spoke to the deep strangeness of their lives that spiritual possession was easier to cope with than a sexuality crisis, but Adam wasn't going to complain. Ronan shrugged, the lean muscles in his arms and shoulders rippling visibly under the skin. "You and me and Cabeswater are kind of a package deal," he said.

Adam nodded. "Yeah, mostly." He'd bound himself to Cabeswater and Ronan had been born to it. Neither one of them would be leaving the forest behind anytime soon. He didn't even really want to. All he wanted was a minute alone with Ronan.

Thanks to Blue, he could have that. "Can I show you something?"

"Sure." Ronan's voice was calm and steady, but his eyes were bright with curiosity.

Taking a deep breath, Adam closed his eyes and followed Blue's instructions as best he could. He imagined a hard shell around his body, a tangible layer of energy wrapped around his skin. Then slowly, slowly he reached out with his mind and pushed. The barrier crackled and pulsed as it grew, expanding to hold Ronan too, a giant ball of protection that cradled the two of them inside, and kept everything else at bay. 

A deep silence settled into his mind, where usually there was a constant hum of static and whispers. Adam opened his eyes, and found that Ronan was standing now, tantalizingly close. He looked from the cocoon of shimmering air to Adam and back.

"Just you and me now," Adam said, and leaned closer to Ronan, closing the distance between them.

"You sure about this?" Ronan asked, when their lips were only a few inches apart.  
"I'm sure." Adam let himself laugh a little against Ronan's skin, which might have been a mistake.

Ronan drew back, his hardened look dropping into place again. "If you want something easy--"

Adam looked at Ronan's wary expression, his hard eyes and sharp-edged mouth. He thought about the boy in his vision, and how simple it would've been to kiss him. This Ronan, the real flesh and blood Ronan, was nothing like that. Simple and easy had nothing to do with this boy in front of him. He shook his head. "I want you."

"I don't do anything halfway, Parrish." It was a warning, as much as anything. But Adam already knew that Ronan threw himself fully into everything, from friendship to tattoos. A casual relationship was just not an option with Ronan.

"Good," Adam said, as firm and fierce as he could. "I'm in this, Lynch. You're not getting rid of me now."

Ronan cut off his words with his mouth, pressing his lips to Adam's in a surprisingly gentle kiss. This time, there was no whisper of leaves in the wind, no ghostly music, no flower petals brushing against Adam's face. Instead there was only the static hum of Adam's shield around them, and the sounds they made together.

They'd only kissed one time, before. Just one kiss that -- for Adam -- had been rudely interrupted. It had been enough to occupy his mind ever since, though. That kiss had been nearly all he could think about for days, playing and replaying it in his head a hundred times.

Now, their second kiss felt both new and familiar. Adam opened his lips immediately, deepening the kiss without any teasing. For all Ronan's jagged edges, he sank easily into the kiss, his tongue and lips warm and soft against Adam's own as they caressed Adam's mouth hungrily.

Ronan slid his fingers into Adam's shaggy hair and cradled the back of his head in his palm, as Adam angled his head to kiss him more deeply. The feeling of Ronan's arms around him was incredible, warm and solid and everything he'd been imagining for months. He wanted to keep kissing Ronan for at least a week. 

Adam wrapped one arm around Ronan's waist, fingertips slipping under his shirt to tease the warm skin above his belt. Ronan hummed into his mouth, and the sound reverberated in Adam's own chest. He tightened his arm and stepped in close, so close that he could feel Ronan hard and insistent against his stomach.

A hot spike of desire shot through Adam and he gasped, breaking the kiss. He buried his face in the spot where Ronan's neck met his shoulder and pushed even closer to Ronan, adjusting his stance until his hard cock pressed against Ronan's, separated only by layers of canvas and denim.

Ronan swore and walked Adam backward until his hips bumped against the wall and he was pressed there. Grinning against the ink-swirled skin of Ronan's neck, Adam thrust his hips again and again until he saw stars and felt hoarse curses against his ear, and knew Ronan was distracted. Then he braced his foot against the wall and pivoted, flipping them around to reverse their positions and pinning Ronan to the wall instead. The crackling energy shield that Adam had built moved with them, making the calendar on the wall flap and flutter as it passed through the paper.

Without protest, Ronan only gasped and arched his back, baring the long curving line of his neck. Adam swallowed hard at the sight and bent his head to bite softly at the sharp point of a tattooed thorn. Ronan's fist clenched convulsively in Adam's t-shirt, and again when Adam stroked the red mark with the flat of his tongue. 

Pinned to the wall, Ronan shuddered and moaned as Adam thrust against him, panting and swearing furiously until he suddenly fell silent. Then with gentle hands, he turned Adam's face toward his own and kissed him hot and slow, swallowing Adam's moans until he, too, was silent.

Adam was sticky and sweaty and his pulse was still pounding in his head and his knees felt as if they might give out. He touched his lips to the edge of Ronan's jaw and braced one forearm against the wall to keep himself upright. Ronan's fingers traced a circle across Adam's ribcage, tickling his skin as it cooled. The air above them hummed with energy.

Adam pulled back an inch and turned his head so he could see Ronan's profile. Ronan's eyes were raised to the shimmering bubble that surrounded them. He raised one hand and touched the barrier, and a humming noise like radio static filled both of Adam's ears.

"What happens when this thing is gone?" Ronan asked softly.

Adam thought about it for a moment. "Then I guess you and me and Cabeswater are a package deal again." He wasn't thrilled at the idea of a magical forest threesome, but Ronan had been right earlier. They were both tangled up in the forest, as much a part of it as the sunlight and the air. If he wanted Ronan Lynch, that was how it had to be. And there was no longer any question that he wanted Ronan, not after what they'd just done, and how it felt, like leaping off the edge of a cliff and discovering he could fly.

The fingers of Ronan's left hand were still threaded through one of Adam's belt loops, and his skull rested against the wall. He turned his head a few degrees to meet Adam's eyes, gaze steady. 

Closing his eyes, Adam concentrated on the energy that still crackled around them, that held the world at bay. He drew in a deep breath and let it out again, and then slowly let the barrier collapse. The shield shimmered briefly in the air and then shrank back into Adam's skin.

For a moment the room was silent, with only the sound of their breathing to fill the space. Then, Adam heard the trees begin to rustle in his quiet ear.

 _Magus. Greywaren_.

All around him, he could feel the branches reaching out. Limbs and leaves and stems wrapped around the two of them in a wooded embrace. Adam clutched Ronan tightly and looked up. He could see the shape of the trees inside the small room, at first solid and real but then slowly fading into the darkness.

A shower of white blossoms drifted out of the air, carpeting the concrete floor as the trees vanished. In one ear, Adam heard the leaves whisper. In his other ear, he heard Ronan swear softly.

It wouldn't be simple or easy. But it would be _theirs_.


End file.
